


in the place of us

by SEMellark



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dreams and Nightmares, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 09:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17180177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SEMellark/pseuds/SEMellark
Summary: Ash isn’t a dreamer, not until Shorter and Eiji come into his life and give him something to dream about, for better or worse.-AU. In which the events ofBanana Fishwere (mostly) just a bad dream.





	in the place of us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marcoandthebodts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcoandthebodts/gifts).



> A Christmas present for my friend Vanne, who I adore very much and who didn't deserve to have her heart broken by this series.

Aslan “Ash” Callenreese isn’t a dreamer. Ash wouldn’t say it’s some psychological problem he has. Even before Griffin left to fight overseas, even before their father fell seriously into the bottle, Ash just… didn’t dream.

This extended to nightmares, too. Sometimes shit happened during the day that probably could’ve been considered a waking nightmare; but the nights, at least, were peaceful.

Ash isn’t a dreamer, not until Shorter and Eiji come into his life and give him something to dream about, for better or worse.

It started out harmless enough. Even from the beginning of their relationship, one of their favorite things to do together was sleep. Before them, Ash couldn’t remember ever sharing a bed with anyone. Now, it’s hard to imagine how he slept by himself every night for nineteen years.

Shorter and Eiji had previously been trying to figure out ways to wrangle Ash into bed and make him _stay_ since they met him. He just gets lost in his own head sometimes, sits at the computer until the sun rises doing homework and running calculations until he falls asleep slumped over the keyboard.

Eiji would chastise him about chronic back pain while Shorter smirked in the background like an asshole. And Ash could grumble and groan all he wanted, but that didn’t change the fact that he still made an effort to fix his sleeping habits, if only for Eiji’s peace of mind.

Slowing down and relaxing just didn’t come easy to him. And it wasn’t until their close, three-way friendship inevitably gave way to something else that the two of them realized the best way to make Ash stay in bed at night was to physically keep him there.

Shorter is an extremely tactile person, and so is Eiji when the mood suits him, or when he senses that Ash or Shorter need the extra attention. (He has an annoying knack for it.) So, it wasn’t a difficulty for Shorter to start physically removing Ash from the chair at his desk and carry him to the bedroom most nights. Ash tried to put up a struggle at first – an elbow to the sternum would’ve done the trick if it were anyone else – but then Shorter would deposit him down on the bed and into Eiji’s embrace, and… well…

It’s just hard to get out of Eiji’s arms once he’s in them, okay? There’s pretty much nowhere else he’d rather be, and Shorter and Eiji both know it, the bastards.

It was an easy thing to get used to: dozing off to Eiji’s heartbeat under his ear and Shorter’s deep, even breathing at his back. Honestly, it was fucking terrifying how quickly he got used to it. Ash still isn’t sure how he managed to get the two of them to even like him, let alone _love_ him; so, by the same token, he isn’t sure how to keep them from leaving.

Maybe that’s what causes the dreams to start, that fear he carries like another limb, the constant worry that one day Shorter and Eiji will wake up and look at him and see Ash for what he is. Because even though Shorter has been his best friend for years, he still hasn’t really _seen_ Ash at his worst. And Eiji is Eiji – passionate and good-natured yet stubborn to a fault. Ash doubts that even Eiji at his most bull-headed would stick around once he realizes what exactly he’s dealing with.

Ash gets too comfortable, is the thing. He’s young and dumb and so in love he wants to just scream most days. He starts to accept the possibility of a future, not just a future by itself, but one _with them._ Ash accepts that Shorter is going to be the one forcing him to bed every night while Eiji drags him out of it every morning. He expects the inevitable discussion with their landlord when they give in to Eiji’s pleas for a cat or three. He looks forward to showing up at the diner late at night to walk home with Shorter when he has to close for his sister.

That’s when the dreaming starts. That’s when Ash falls asleep between the two people he holds most dear and dreams of blood, of death, of being forced to make decisions that he never wanted nor expected to have to make.

It isn’t always the same dream, although there are recurring ones. There always seems to be a running theme of Eiji being lost or hunted, with Ash running around half out of his mind while Shorter remains the voice of reason despite the fear mirrored in his own dark eyes.

Ash dreams of seeing Eiji fly. He dreams of Eiji taking bullets for him. He dreams of seeing him weak and wounded in abandoned buildings or crowded hospitals. He dreams of yearning, of longing, of forcing himself to leave even while Eiji waits for him because it’s for the best. Because the two of them together? They make something insurmountable and terrifying. They’re strong enough that people fear them, but they’re too weak to protect what they have. And Ash would rather die than see Eiji suffer for it, so he leaves.

Ash dreams of killing Shorter. His best friend. The guy who pissed on an electric fence in grade school on a dare, the one who’s never once said a bad word against his older sister. He’s pulled Ash out of his worst depressive moments to date, and the idea of him disappearing – and at Ash’s hand – is unfathomable.

The worst part about it is that, in his dreams, Ash doesn’t hesitate to kill him. He sees Shorter go for Eiji and just… doesn’t think. He dives for the gun and pulls the trigger. It doesn’t matter if his grief is immediate and all consuming, or if he feels a gaping hole open in his chest as Shorter hits the ground. Shorter dies every time, and Ash is desperately lonely the second he’s gone.

It’s a dream that stays with him long after he wakes. Sometimes Ash can’t even look at Shorter in the morning without wanting to throw up, unable to shove the image of dream-Shorter’s vacant yet somehow haunted eyes, or the way he’d pleaded with Ash to just end it.

This goes on for a few weeks before Shorter and Eiji notice that something is going on. Ash isn’t stupid enough to think that they’ll just leave good enough alone and go about their business. The two are prone to conspiring against him when they think it’s in his best interest, and Ash notices their little tag-team almost immediately.

He predicts most of it, Shorter coming in with the heavy-hitters when Ash’s guard is down, asking his probing questions and wrestling Ash into headlocks when he doesn’t get the answers he wants. Eiji is subtler in his attempts, though not by much. His MO is to get Ash comfortable, make him his favorite foods and ask him about his day before _casually_ mentioning that Ash has “seemed tired lately, are you _sure_ you’re not pushing yourself too hard?”

Ash lets them do it, knowing full well nothing they do will make him spill. He _wants_ to tell them everything, but he’s just too worried about how they’ll react. There’s probably nothing more alarming than hearing that your own boyfriend dreams about murdering you, or abandoning you when you’re alone and recovering in a gloomy hospital.

If Ash’s general everything hasn’t chased them off, then that surely will. So, he stays quiet. Which was, in hindsight, probably where he went wrong with the whole thing. 

…

As someone who spent most of his life never dreaming, it takes Ash a while to familiarize himself with the patterns. He wakes up sweating almost every time, no matter if the dream was good or bad. He sleeps uninterrupted when he’s exhausted, and the risk of a nightmare increases when he’s feeling stressed or overwhelmed.

So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise when Ash dreams of killing Shorter again the same night he hears from the insurance company after months of radio silence.

Ash was named Griffin’s beneficiary should anything happen to him overseas. They talked about it before Griffin first left, but Ash was eleven at the time. He didn’t actually think anything would happen to _his_ big brother. And as years continued to go by, and Griffin continued to come home, Ash began to think that nothing ever _would_ happen.

He got the call after Griffin’s unit went dark. They’d tried calling his dad, he later learned, but their calls went unanswered, and no one was home when troops in the States stopped by the house.

Ash doesn’t really remember much about that night. He knows he, Eiji, and Shorter were squeezed together on the couch watching a movie. He really only remembers because he didn’t want to watch the dumb thing anyway and kept trying to coax his boyfriends into something more fun.

Ash remembers getting up to answer the phone when it rang, miffed about his rebuked seduction attempts, but he can’t recall what they told him. His next memory is of being in bed with Eiji in the dark, clutching his own arms and shivering while Eiji ran slow hands up and down his back. “Everything is okay,” Eiji kept saying, his accent thick and choppy in a way it only was when he was either scared or furious, “they will find him.”

Max was the only one who returned home, haggard and gaunt with a look in his eyes that spoke of true agony when he looked at Ash. He apologized a thousand times, but even in the face of that sorrow, Ash knew he probably would’ve strangled the man with his bare hands if Eiji and Shorter hadn’t been always there. It just didn’t seem fair to him that Max came home and Griffin didn’t. The grief counselors he saw told him that what he felt was normal, but that Max was surely suffering from survivor’s guilt of his own, and that some things just couldn’t be prevented.

Ash tried to be receptive to what the counselors were telling him, but he had enough when they started going in on his “worrying dependence” on his boyfriends. Ash walked out of their offices and never went back, despite Shorter’s and Eiji’s disapproval; but he learned not to blame Max over time, and he grew close to the man who’d shared so much of Griffin’s life with him. The pain never went away, but Ash was handling it.

He thought he was handling it.

Ash didn’t want any of the insurance money, or what was left of Griffin’s estate, as if any of it could make up for the loss of his only brother. He struggled over it, but Eiji and Shorter reminded him that Griffin hadn’t seen it that way. “He left it to you for a reason,” Shorter told him in one of his rare moments of complete seriousness. “He knew you’d put it to good use.”

“Good use” is subjective, really, but Ash ultimately decided to use the money to put himself through college. He was close to dropping out around the time Griffin died, mostly because he was bored. All of it was child’s play at best, but Ash put himself through it because he knew it would make Griffin happy. It was also the best way to help secure a stable future with Shorter and Eiji, for which no price was too high.

The man who calls from the insurance company is a complete dick, not to mention he seems to have no idea how to do his own job, which Ash picks up on almost immediately. Ash talks circles around him because it’s fun and only stops when Eiji wanders into the kitchen, hears what’s going on, and shoots Ash one of his I’m Not Going To Say Anything But I’m Still Disappointed In You looks.

They go back and forth for hours, Ash growing so frustrated he asks to be transferred to a supervisor before hanging up when he’s put on hold for over half an hour. He feels pissed off and uncomfortable all night. He can’t even enjoy himself when he takes his nightly bath with Eiji, scowling down at his reflection in the tub while Eiji washes his hair and sings in Japanese under his breath.

Shorter gets home from his shift at the diner as they’re drying off, and he tries his usual routine of whining about them having fun without him, even though he always takes his showers in the morning after his runs. Eiji humors him with kisses and leftovers from dinner, but Ash just isn’t in the mood. He disappears into their bedroom while they’re otherwise preoccupied, exhausted in all the ways a person possibly could be.

He doesn’t bother changing, just pulls off his hoodie and climbs into bed, still wearing the leggings he’d stolen from Shorter’s dresser earlier that morning. It’s unusual for him to go to bed this early and entirely unprompted, and Ash is sure his boyfriends are whispering about him in the kitchen.

Ash tells himself it doesn’t bother him and tries to fall asleep.

He doesn’t know how long he lies there. One moment he’s burrowing into Shorter’s Tempur-Pedic pillow and the next he’s desperately pulling at chains, suspended and bound as Shorter and Eiji square off with knives grasped in each of their hands.

“Stop!” Ash shouts, but Eiji’s the only one who even acknowledges him, dark eyes wide and frightened as they flick to Ash for the briefest of seconds before returning to Shorter as he lunges. “Stop this, _please!”_

The only response he gets is laughter from people he doesn’t recognize. And Ash is as furious as he is terrified, he’s going to rip all of them limb from limb as soon as he gets out of these chains. But first – _But first –_

Eiji is down. Eiji is down with Shorter looming over him, and as the chains are inexplicably loosened, a gun comes skidding toward Ash from the darkness. He doesn’t think. His body moves entirely on its own as Ash throws himself to the ground and closes a numb hand around the gun.

The safety is already removed. Ash lifts the gun and fires once, straight into Shorter’s defenseless back.

It takes a moment for Shorter to fall. Ash, still on his knees, watches his best friend crumple to the ground. And in his place is Eiji, pushed up on his elbows and bleeding from the face wound inflicted on him by Shorter. He isn’t looking at Ash.

“Shorter,” Eiji says, voice faint, like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. “Shorter? _Shorter!”_

It hits Ash, then, as he watches Eiji scramble toward Shorter’s body, what he’s just done. He drops the gun, all his limbs going numb. He wants to scream, cry, demand to know why this is happening. How did they get here? Why would Shorter try to hurt Eiji, when he’s the one person who loves him just as much as Ash does?

Why did Ash shoot him? Why didn’t he try to find another way?

Ash is grabbed roughly from behind, and his fierce and immediate struggle is useless. Eiji puts up a similar fight as he’s dragged from Shorter’s corpse, tears streaming down his face and mixing with the blood from his wound. More men appear out of nowhere, four of them hauling Shorter off the hard ground and carrying his body toward a side door.

“Shorter!” Ash screams, drowning Eiji’s cries and the angry voices of the faceless men holding them down. The distance being forced between them and Shorter is rubbing Ash raw, Eiji’s panic amplifying his own until it feels like Shorter’s name is the only word Ash knows. Even as the chains are tightened once more, Ash doesn’t stop screaming. They can’t take Shorter’s body from them, he _belongs with them. “Shorter!”_

“Hey, hey,” a voice says in the dark, and Ash sucks in a shuddering gasp that clogs his throat and makes his eyes wet. He flails and kicks out at the arms wrapping around him, mouth clenched shut so he can’t even scream. It takes Ash a couple more seconds to realize that he’s in bed. He’s awake. He’d only been dreaming. “It’s okay, baby, you’re fine.”

Ash is still getting used to hearing the pet names he’s heard Shorter use with previous boyfriends and girlfriends on him. Usually they make him a little squeamish, but he just can’t find the breath to say anything about it. More than anything, he just doesn’t _care_ right now, because Shorter is _here,_ he’s alive, he’s okay. Ash didn’t kill him, and no one is going to take him away.

Rough hands smooth up and down Ash’s arms, trying to both soothe and steady him as he shakes. “You’re sweating like crazy,” Shorter murmurs. “Hey, talk to me, yeah? What’s going on?”

“Shorter?” Fuck, now Eiji’s awake. Ash can feel him shifting in the bed behind him, feels the soft nudge of Eiji’s knee against the back of his thigh. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Ash,” replies Shorter, his voice gruff from sleep but still seeping with worry. Ash squeezes his eyes shut and sobs, too exhausted to do anything else.

Eiji makes a distressed sound, pressing a palm between Ash’s hunched and trembling shoulders. The contact between their bare skin makes Ash shudder, and before he thinks about it, he’s turning onto his other side, pressing into Eiji’s hands as if they can sap away all the hurt.

Shorter follows him, scooting closer until they’re all huddled together in the middle of the bed, Ash tucked safely into the curves of Shorter’s and Eiji’s bodies. Shorter keeps whispering to him while Eiji pets Ash’s hair, similar to how he’d done it in the bath earlier.

“Can you breathe with me, Ash?” Eiji asks gently, when Ash’s sobbing refuses to cease and it makes it harder for him to suck in even a single breath. “Everything’s okay, you will feel better once you stop crying.”

Ash barely has two brain cells to run on, but he knows that Eiji is usually right about these things. He tries to focus and do as his boyfriend says, matching Eiji’s slowed breathing as best he can. “You, too,” Eiji says, addressing Shorter, and for a while, the three of them just lie there quietly, breathing together.

It helps more than Eiji probably realizes, as the two of them force Ash to focus on and acknowledge their breathing. It takes a while, but the details of how Shorter had looked, shot through and lying cold on the ground, start to become fuzzy. The memory is replaced by _this_ Shorter, very much alive with his chest expanding rhythmically against Ash’s back.

Gradually, the tears stop, and once Ash has calmed down, he has the capacity to feel embarrassed about what just happened. He feels particularly disgusting, lying in his own sweat with tears and snot drying on his face. As if reading his mind, Eiji pulls the sleeves of his sweater down over his hands and begins to wipe Ash’s face clean.

“You okay?” Shorter asks while Eiji silently works.

“Yeah,” Ash says, the biggest lie he’s told in a _while._ “That was… it was nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“C’mon, baby, that wasn’t nothing,” Shorter protests. “Of course we’re worried, something is obviously up with you. Let us help.”

“Please,” Eiji adds softly, and Ash feels his resolve crumble against their combined weight.

Ash tells them everything, from the simple nightmares to the horrific ones, from simply losing Eiji in a crowd to gunning Shorter down without blinking. They don’t say a single word the entire time, just soak in what Ash is telling them without interruption. The longer he speaks, the more Ash is convinced that this is it, this is when he scares them into leaving.

“I usually know I’m dreaming as it’s happening,” Ash murmurs, licking his lips nervously and tasting the salt of his tears and sweat. “It just… it felt so _real_ this time.”

“But it _wasn’t_ ,” Shorter insists. “C’mon, we all know you wouldn’t hurt me or Eiji like that.”

“Is this why you have been restless?” Eiji presses, always getting to the heart of the issue. He’s gone back to running his fingers through Ash’s hair, despite the dream-sweat. “You were worried about this?”

Ash just nods, hoping that they can feel his movement even if they can’t see it. There’s so much he wants to say to them, but he can’t find the words. This feeling that seems to suffocate him is too foreign to explain. “Aslan.” Ash stiffens, eyes widening in the dark as Eiji tugs him ever closer. His voice is quiet and slow. Warm, just like his hugs. “You are… precious.”

Ash doesn’t say anything. Behind him, Shorter is just as quiet. Neither of them even dares to breathe, hanging onto Eiji’s every word.

“You are lovely. You make everything better,” Eiji continues with a quiet forcefulness, like what he’s saying is irrefutable and everyone should know it. “There’s so much love inside you, and it makes you burn so brightly. To have that attention on us, do you think there is anything we wouldn’t do?”

“I’d follow both of you into Hell,” Shorter says, seemingly having found his voice. “You _know_ that. ”

“I wouldn’t mind any of it,” Eiji admits. “Whatever you dreamed, I wouldn’t mind it. If it meant I could stay with you and Shorter, I would endure anything.”

And it’s killing Ash, this back and forth, Shorter and Eiji waxing such depressing poetry over him like this is shit they actually believe. This kind of stuff is on his mind all the time; he thinks about some terrible thing or another befalling either Shorter or Eiji and the lengths he would go to save them. Somehow, the idea that they feel the same – _exactly the same_ – is devastating to contemplate.

Ash can feel it creeping up on him, a rising hysteria that won’t be stomped down. It’s all too much. “They’re just dreams,” says Ash. “They’re _just dreams._ ”

“Even if they weren’t, it wouldn’t matter,” Shorter says, and Eiji dips down to press his forehead to Ash’s before whispering, “We would still love you, Ash.”

“What the fuck,” Ash says, voice hoarse and chest on fire. “What the _fuck.”_

“It’s okay,” Eiji responds. Even if Ash can’t see him, he knows Eiji is smiling. “You don’t have to understand. Shorter and I, we do.”

The scary thing is that Ash does understand. He would resort to violence to keep either of them safe; he has before. He’s gotten into gang fights for Shorter, back when they were young and stupid and actually took part in gang activity. And he almost beat a man bloody at a bar for slapping Eiji and calling him all sorts of horrible names when Eiji wouldn’t submit to the guy’s advances.

Shorter and Eiji both have seen Ash’s desperate sort of love firsthand. And yet, somehow, Ash had convinced himself they wouldn’t understand.

“I _killed Shorter,”_ Ash says. “You’re telling me you’d be fine with that? The both of you?”

Ash feels Shorter shrug behind him. “I mean, yeah, it fucking sucks, but it sounds like you did it for Eiji. Shit happens sometimes, Ash.”

“I can’t fucking believe you.”

“The fact remains that they _were_ dreams,” Eiji concedes. “I can’t imagine anything like that happening for real. But if it did… “

“We’d work through it,” Shorter finishes. “You worry too much, babe.”

“Maybe that dumb therapist was right, and we _are_ weirdly codependent.”

“He said that?” Eiji asks. “No wonder you wouldn’t go back.”

“It wasn’t just that,” Ash grumbles, although that was a big part of it.

Shorter laughs, deep in his belly so that he shakes with it. “We’re all a little fucked up. We’re just less fucked up when we’re together, so it evens out.”

“Oh, is that how this works?” Eiji muses, and he yelps when Shorter reaches over to pinch his cheek, slapping at Shorter with one hand while keeping a grip on Ash with the other.

Ash doesn’t think there’s anything particularly romantic about any of this. It’s all overwhelming and more than a little messed up, and some part of Ash wants to get on his knees and beg his old therapist to take all of them in as patients. Because Ash spent most of his life dodging beer bottles and waiting for a love that never came. Because sometimes Shorter’s brain tells him that not being able to meet his father’s standards of toxic masculinity makes him a failure. Because Eiji was so depressed before he came to America, stuck in a non-supportive family that blamed him for the injury that ended his pole-vaulting career.

But another part of Ash thinks that it’s probably fine that they’re like this. It isn’t like they live in this fantasy world where they think their problems will be fixed if they just love each other enough. Shorter still has this dumb idea that whatever he does is never good enough, and sometimes Eiji has depressive episodes that leave him quiet and distant. Nothing Ash can say will make any of it better, but he can sit with them when they’re sad, or take them out on dates where they can just forget about everything for a little while.

They’re all handling their shit as best they can, and Ash was a dumbass for thinking he had to go it alone for even a second.

“You two are ridiculous,” Ash says finally, smiling up at Eiji when their eyes meet in the gloom. “I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“You’d starve without Eiji’s cooking,” Shorter snorts, just as Eiji says, “You would get into so much trouble without Shorter watching your back.”

Ash listens to them go back and forth for a while, keeping quiet even as their voices grow further and further away, lulling him off into a deep and peaceful sleep.

 …

They’ve barely moved from their positions when Shorter’s alarm goes off the next morning. Eiji still has his hands in Ash’s hair, and Shorter has a long arm slung over the both of them that grows less heavy as he twitches awake.

Ash groans as Shorter rolls out of the bed, burrowing further into Eiji. “Why do you always have to run at six in the fucking morning? Can’t you wait?”

“Early bird gets the worm or whatever,” Shorter says through a yawn, circling the bed so he can dig into the closet on Eiji’s side. Ash squints at Shorter’s naked back over Eiji’s shoulder, watching his boyfriend run a hand through his disheveled, violet hair. “You should come with.”

“ _Iie_ ,” mumbles Eiji, not entirely awake. “Leave us.”

“Yeah, leave us,” Ash says, somewhat smug. “We’ll just be here, in bed, nice and warm. And mostly naked.”

Shorter snorts. “Like you’re gonna do anything but pass out as soon as I leave.”

Eiji grunts, wrapping his other arm around Ash and hugging him close. Ash hitches a leg over Eiji’s hip in response, tucking his face back into the curve of Eiji’s shoulder. “You never know,” Ash mumbles. “The mood might strike.”

“It won’t,” Eiji sighs. “You’re sleepy, Ash. Sleepy baby Ash.”

“You’re both delirious,” Shorter says, tugging on one of Eiji’s university hoodies – too tight around the shoulders, as usual, but he never seems to care. He then leaves the room, and Ash closes his eyes for what feels like all of two seconds before he’s startled awake again, as Shorter looms over the both of them to press a kiss or three into each of their hairlines. “Keep the bed warm for me, yeah? I’ll be back before you start to miss me.”

 _What if I already miss you,_ Ash thinks, even though he knows Shorter is joking. Eiji throat rumbles underneath Ash’s cheek as he hums, mumbling out a, “Be safe,” before falling silent again.

Ash stays awake until he hears the door to their apartment open and close. The silence Shorter leaves behind is comfortable, but for a moment, Ash is reminded of his dream, of the brief moment of silence that followed his finger pulling the trigger.

His eyes flutter closed, and he takes a deep breath against Eiji’s skin.

Shorter _will_ be back, and maybe they’ll sleep for another hour or two before getting up and properly talking about what happened last night. Ash will have to call insurance back, but he won’t be alone while he does it. Maybe things can start going back to normal, and Ash can get a handle on his rampant dreaming.

“You slept better after we all talked,” Eiji says quietly, startling Ash, who thought he’d fallen back asleep. “You didn’t move even once.”

Ash feels inexplicably warm. “Can’t imagine why.”


End file.
